A BRIGHT OUTLOOK THOUGH GLAUCOMA IN HIS RIGHT EYE ENDED HIS CAREER, KIRBY PUCKETT STILL SEES THE WORLD IN A GOOD LIGHT

True enough, Hershey bars are drawn into his mouth with alarmingefficiency, like crisp dollar bills into a change machine. Butcan a sugar rush account for his enthusiasm? The way he does thetwist in his swivel chair? How he pops up to greet visitors withshouts of "Daddy!" and "Poppy!"

Listen to Kirby Puckett, subject of the forthcoming KirbyPuckett Weekend in Minneapolis, as he gazes out the window ofhis Metrodome office onto a street called Kirby Puckett Place."I've had everything in this town," says the new executive vicepresident of the Minnesota Twins. "Kirby Puckett Pancakes, man,they were good; just add milk and eggs, and you're ready to go.I've been on two Wheaties boxes, man. I got to meet RobertGuillaume--who's that, Benson? And whatshisname, from LethalWeapon...."

This is the cast of Puckett Place, which is the anti-PeytonPlace, the un-Melrose Place, a place to meet the impossiblyupbeat. Puckett's is a place of happy endings, where fame is nota burden but a blessing, and the celebrities' cliche about fansbothering them during dinner is exposed for what it really is:Which is to say, no bother at all. "If I'm just sitting in arestaurant, and I've ordered my food, and I'm just talking?"says Puckett, far and away the most recognizable resident ofMinnesota. "That's no problem."

What's one more autograph when you've just signed 15,000baseball cards, to be given to young fans at the Twins-OaklandA's game this Saturday night?

Self-deprecation is the norm around Puckett Place. He likes toeat--the 5'9", 223-pound Puckett has always resembled areflection in a fun-house mirror--so he happily appeared onDavid Letterman's show on May 9 to read the Top 10 Ways toMispronounce Kirby Puckett (No. 7: "Turkey Bucket"). When askedto look forward to the retirement of his uniform number 34 in aceremony this Sunday at the Dome, Puckett says, "It's the lastthing I ever thought I'd see." Far from sounding mock-modest,the words are literally true.

For Puckett is now completely blind in his right eye, which isdiscolored and half-hooded by his eyelid. This, after fivesurgeries over 3 1/2 months last year in an unsuccessful effortto arrest the glaucoma that would force him to retire last July12, at the age of 35.

He still has 20/20 vision in his left eye, and doctors say thathe can expect to retain normal sight in that eye for as long ashe lives. In the meantime he does everything he ever did, withone exception. "The one thing I can't do," says Puckett, "iswhat I loved to do all my life--play baseball."

This was supposed to be the cruel, O. Henry ending to Puckett'sstory--the concert pianist who loses his fingers--an occasionfor self-pity and anger. The trouble is, these emotions don'texist in Puckett. "Who do I get mad at?" he asks, as ifconsidering the question for the first time. "You tell me, isthere anybody in particular?"

Well, um, God, maybe?

"Listen," Puckett patiently explains. "I've always been a personwho believes things happen for a reason, though we may neverknow that reason. So I don't do any soul-searching; I just goon. I knew that baseball wasn't going to last forever. It wasgreat living in a fairy tale for 12 years, traveling and meetingpeople I would have never met outside the game, and I enjoyedevery minute of it.

"Didn't I always have a smile on my face? I may not have beenthe prettiest thing in the world, but I gave all I had. So nowthat it's over, I don't have to look in the mirror and say, 'Iwish I had done this.' When I look in the mirror every day Isay, 'Aaaaaaaah.'" Puckett leans back in his swivel chair andsmiles serenely. "'I can't believe that I played.' I just thankGod that I got the chance to live out the dream that I had sinceI was five years old.

"Isn't that the way life's supposed to be?" asks Puckett, goingto his office fridge, cracking open a soda and handing it to hisguest before he can ask another impertinent question. "I think Ihelped people along the way, and hopefully I'll be able tocontinue to help people from this position I'm in now." Hepauses. "I'm 36 years old, man, what am I supposed to do? Juststop living?"

Well...yes, actually, that's exactly what was expected of him.People, he sensed last summer, felt sorry for him, hesitating,for the first time in his memory, to interrupt his dinners or toshout to him on the street. Puckett finds it remarkable thatanyone could feel sorry for a man who is now in the final yearof a contract that will pay him

$6 million this season, $6 million to occasionally pop into theoffice of the last-place Twins and, in his words, "Keep hopealive in this organization." The irony is that Puckett wasraised in "a place where hope died," as Newsweek once describedthe Robert Taylor Homes housing project, nine blocks from oldComiskey Park in Chicago.

The former centerfielder only permits himself one regret, and itis a mild one: He would have liked to have played another fouryears--he asserts that he could have gotten 180 RBIs lastseason, and it isn't clear if he's kidding--and reached 3,000hits. It would have been a likely milestone. Only Willie Keelerhad more hits in his first 10 years in the big leagues (2,065)than Puckett (2,040).

People forget that Puckett was a base-stealing, singles-hittingsprite who batted leadoff in his first three seasons with theTwins. Only then did he remake himself into a number-threehitter who would average 98 RBIs a year for the next nineseasons. "Most guys hitting .300 would not have changed," saysformer Minnesota outfielder and three-time American Leaguebatting champ Tony Oliva, who was Puckett's hitting instructorfor many of those years. "But he realized that when he hit theball, it was like a bullet. He hit line drives into the outfieldfence: Boom! So he tried hitting for power, and pretty soon hewas smashing windshields in the parking lot."

Ah, yes. During that power epiphany in the spring of 1986,Puckett hit 10 consecutive balls over the fence in Orlando, andeach time he heard the sound of breaking glass. "Little did Iknow," says Puckett, "that they had some kind of auto show goingon next door. A policeman drove his motorcycle onto the fieldand told Puckett, "Swing at one more pitch, and I will put youin jail."

"If I knew there were cars out there," Puckett says now,seriously, "I'd have made an adjustment and gone to right."

He could have, too. Puckett sat in the infield of an emptyMilwaukee County Stadium one Saturday morning in 1987 to talkhitting with Oliva, and went 10 for 11 in the next two games.With the Twins facing elimination in Game 6 of the 1991 WorldSeries against the Atlanta Braves, Puckett singled, tripled,drove in a run with a sacrifice fly, stole a base, scored a run,robbed Ron Gant of extra bases with a Ringling Brothers catchagainst the Metrodome's Plexiglas centerfield wall and hit thegame-winning home run in the 11th inning. In his career he wontwo World Series, six Gold Gloves and a batting title. In hisfinal season, 1995, Puckett hit .314 with 23 home runs and 99RBIs, winding up with 2,304 career hits. "I think I got betteras I got older," he says.

"Three thousand hits was inevitable," says former first basemanKent Hrbek, his teammate of 11 years with the Twins. "He playedevery day, never was seriously injured, and wasalmost...Ripkenish. But let's not think about what he would havedone. Let's think about what he did. I think it'll be cute tosee him sitting in a boat on a lake for once, instead of sittingin a dugout."

Because he spent last summer seeking medical solutions to adisease that proved insoluble, this is Puckett's first freesummer in 24 years. He plans to spend it fishing nearly everyday at his new lake house in northern Minnesota. "He'll cleanout the lake," says Hrbek, who helped teach Puckett to fish in1984. "Not of fish, but of weeds. He's still green under thegills out there. He's still got a lot of Chicago in him."

It is this gentle needling that Puckett says he misses most, notthe games themselves, so Hrbek is asked to give his formerteammate some therapeutic razzing for old times' sake. But hedeclines. "Why should I give him heat for being an executive?"says Hrbek, the consummate clubhouse instigator, "when hedoesn't give me heat for being a load?"

In fact, Puckett has been the subject of a running joke aroundthe Twins offices since spring training, when he agreed to signthose 15,000 cards. After he finally finished the grim task inApril, he loosed a scream in his office so loud that "peoplemust have thought I was giving birth to twins," he says. Inessence, of course, he is the father of these Twins, their Ernie(Mr. Cub) Banks. For that reason--and to help fill the seats fora hideous team--the franchise is taking this entire weekend topay tribute to Puckett,and to a career cut so short, so abruptly.

Puckett remembers getting out of bed on the final day of springtraining in 1996 to find his wife, Tonya, in the laundry room oftheir Fort Myers, Fla., condominium. To Kirby, she appeared tobe testifying on Court TV, her hair and clothing visible but herface obscured behind a fuzzy circle, "like dark clouds," asPuckett puts it.

"Sweetie," he said, "I think I slept on my eye wrong."

Upon arriving at the ballpark, Puckett told Twins trainer DickMartin the same thing, minus the "Sweetie" part, and an eye testrevealed a partial blockage of a blood vessel behind the righteye. The next day he had the first of his five surgeries on thateye and was placed on the 15-day disabled list.

"I couldn't play catch," Puckett says. "I tried to shag, and itseemed like the balls were coming a thousand miles an hour." Hecouldn't even toss the ball with his children, six-year-oldCatherine and four-year-old Kirby Jr., so fouled up was hisdepth perception. When he would pull into the garage and parkhis car--Puckett continues to drive--Tonya would ask him, "Whatare you doing?"

"I'm parking."

"Get out of the car," Tonya would tell him, and Kirby would getout of the car to see that he was still 10 feet from the backwall and that the car's rear bumper was still sticking out thegarage door. He would stand there with his mouth agape.

It was absurd. His vision had always been 20/20. "Here I am, alifetime .318 hitter, I got 2,300 hits with these eyes, I meanthat's the last thing in the world I would ever think, thatsomething was wrong with these eyes."

On April 12 of last year an early form of glaucoma wasdiagnosed, and it went unalleviated by three laser surgeriesover the next two months. Finally, on July 12, Dr. Bert Glaserat the Retina Institute of Maryland performed a final,last-ditch surgery, called a vitrectomy, to try to restore bloodflow to Puckett's retina. "This was the telltale," says Puckett."Everyone was nervous. But I was calm, because I was finallygoing to know. Will I get back in shape and go at it again, orjust shut it down?"

When Puckett came out of surgery, his wife and two agents werewaiting nervously. Puckett lay on the bed with a patch on hisright eye as Dr. Glaser said softly, "Kirby, I'm sorry to saythis, but, unfortunately, you won't be able to play baseballanymore." Tonya wept, and the agents teared up, and Puckettclosed his eyes and turned his face toward the ceiling and ...raised his arms in a gesture of triumph. "Yes," he said. "Thankyou. Thank you, Jesus."

"Within hours, we flew to Minneapolis to announce hisretirement," says Ron Shapiro, one of Puckett's agents. "That'swhen Kirby walked into that locker room and said to everyone,'It may be a cloudy day in my right eye, but there's sunshine inmy left eye.'"

"I was just so happy to know that, O.K., now I can get on withthe rest of my life," says Puckett. "My life in baseball, yes,it's over. But life isn't over. Life just begins now."

He wants to spend that life, he says, helping others. On thisday, he has a letter on his desk from the mother of a10-year-old boy with congenital blindness in his right eye."Keep hanging in there," Puckett writes him. "Everything's goingto be fine. Fifth grade's going to be harder than fourth grade,so you have to finish strong and get good grades. Because youcan't see out of one eye, that shouldn't stop you from livingyour dreams."

On behalf of Pharmacia & Upjohn, makers of the anti-inflammatoryeyedrops that he applies five times daily--"four drops in thebad eye, one in the good eye as a preventative measure" is allhe does to treat his eyes--Puckett speaks to groups around thecountry, urging them to get screened for glaucoma. His favoriteaudience, however, is children. Children are naturally drawn tohim--former Minnesota general manager Andy MacPhail once saw asmall child point to a Twins logo and say "KirbyPuckett!"--whether or not they know he was a ballplayer.

Puckett thinks that rapport has to do with his fun-to-say nameand his cartoon-like physique. "Kids like me because they'retaller than I am," Puckett says. "I tell 'em people come in allshapes and sizes, and because a guy is taller than me doesn'tmean he's better than me. Your heart is what matters."

There is a line in the children's book The Little Prince thatmay more aptly explain his appeal. "It is only with the heartthat one can see rightly," says one of the book's characters."What is essential is invisible to the eye." In which case,Puckett's vision will be just fine.

COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY HEINZ KLUETMEIER [Kirby Puckett's eyes]COLOR PHOTO: DAVID LIAM KYLE During 12 years with the Twins, Puckett won two World Series, a batting title and six Gold Gloves. [Kirby Puckett batting]COLOR PHOTO: TARO YAMASAKI A new front-office job allows Puckett to spend more time with Tonya, Kirby Jr. and Catherine. [Kirby Puckett Jr., Tonya Puckett, Kirby Puckett, and Catherine Puckett]COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY HEINZ KLUETMEIER Puckett, who fishes frequently these days, says, "I'm 36, amI supposed to just stop living?"[Kirby Puckett in boat]

Before he became the premier postseason performer of his generation, the Patriots icon was a middling college quarterback who invited skepticism, even scorn, from fans and his coaches. That was all—and that was everything